In and Out of Spankingland

It's been a while since I've posted. I'm hardly seen online these days. My activity on fetlife is sporadic. My stats show that this has been my lowest traffic month this year, despite my attempts to draw more attention by using twitter and tumblr. I've had people express that my partial withdraw from the community worries them.

It isn't something to worry about. I'm quite fine. Unfortunately, for various complex reasons, I am currently not being spanked regularly anymore. Because of this, I don't have much to talk about. Furthermore, because I'd obviously rather be getting spanked than not getting spanked, I find it a bit saddening to hear about everyone else's adventures, and I find myself not wanting to read blogs or look at photos. Still, with or without new stories, I know that Spankingland is the place where I belong. Frankly, being offline hasn't helped to quell my desires, either. Everywhere I go, I find things that remind me of spanking. Hairbrushes, belts, wooden spoons and more are on display when I go shopping. The trees sway with switches. A male coworker rolls up his shirt sleeves and puts his hands on his hips. A vanilla friend talks smack about "Words With Friends" by saying he's going to "give me an ass whuppin." At this point in my life, I have more spanko friends than vanilla friends that I talk to on a regular basis. And I have to admit that even if I was in an empty room with nothing to remind me of spanking, my brain would go there anyway. It's in my brain and it's a part of me. There's nothing I can do about those two things (not that I would want to in general. I just mean until things get back to normal).

The moral of this story is that I am going to try to return to my normal level of involvement in the community and that I apologize for my absence.

Fortunately, I was able to get spanked by a close friend in Sioux Falls on Friday night. He's not a spanko (he's a general kinkster) but he was a great Top and I really enjoy trying things that are a bit "different" than my usual comfort zone. I lay on the bed over a pillow while he sat next to me and spanked me with a variety of implements after giving me a nice, long (coveted) warmup. It was also a wonderfully long spanking: it lasted for about 45 minutes. It was enjoyable to have something nice and long instead of short and severe (of course I love that, too).

Heather and the Top's wife (who is also my good friend) watched and sometimes bantered with us while I was being spanked, and then the four of us hung out while I "came down" from all the endorphins. I had a popsicle and cuddled my stuffed koala. It was a lovely night.

I greatly appreciated going to bed with a sore bottom that night, but waking up with one the next morning was even more lovely.

There will be more updates this week: I promise that much!
For now, I'll live vicariously through you guys, so have lots of spanking adventures for me!

An Important Question

I use formspring to answer questions that are posed by friends, readers, fans, whoever. Today, I checked my inbox and among some sexual questions that I didn't feel like answering was the following query:

Who are you really? 


At first glance, it's the simplest question possible. I'm Alex, duh. But it came at a poignant moment for me, and it had a positive influence on my thought processes for a while. It's one of the most important questions one can be asked or ask one's self and it's something that has been on my mind quite a bit recently. I've gone through a phase where I've been less than focused on being my best self. This isn't to say that I've been something other than myself, or that I've been bad or awful or something. But when I read my older writing, there's a difference. It isn't that I lost something; more that I misplaced it. At worst, I've lost a sense of focus. I've been withdrawn and going through some things recently, and I've started to come out the other side. I know that this is vague, but I'm alright with that.

To answer this question, I could point to my fetlife profile, or post a photo, or do a bunch of other things, but I think what I'll do is make a list of what I know to be true.

• I'm a thinking human being.
• I'm a woman.
• I'm smart.
• I enjoy writing, thinking, cooking, a variety of things that I find fun, submission, modeling and (of course) being spanked and I'm enhanced by these things.
• I am (at my best) a person of my choices and volition.
• I'm capable of doing a great many things.
• I'm not my body.
• I'm not other people's perceptions of me.
• I'm not who I used to be.
• I'm not my past, or a product of it.
• I'm not what society makes me.
• I'm not the people that I love.
• I am neither my feelings and emotions nor (at my best) a product of them.
• I'm not just one of the sides of me. I can't be shrunken down to being a cute girl or a bookish nerd or a spanko. I may present myself differently in different situations, but it doesn't change who or what I am.
• I'm a good person and a strong person, but these are not inherent traits. These are choices that I have to constantly make.
• I am (again, at my best) a person that I like and who is worth liking.

[I did not post this to formspring because it bothered me to post it in two places. I can be like that sometimes.]

WELL! Now that my deep stuff is out of the way, I'd like to direct your attention to my tumblr, where I post very not deep photos :P. Special thanks to The-Boss-of-Me, parttimelondoner, for teaching me basic Photoshop and for being the boss of me. <3

Vacation: In Which I Meet Erica Scott (Final Part)

I'm finally getting around to posting about one of the most exciting parts of my vacation to Los Angeles for me. I got to meet Erica Scott.

I'm sure that my readers are familiar with who she is: she's pretty much the best spanking blogger (in my opinion) and she has a wonderful mix of wit, insite and honesty in her writing. She's also a fellow spanking model and has made some pretty awesome videos.

Erica was also, without her knowledge,  fairly influential to my choice to get actively involved in the spanking scene instead of keeping my spanking life a secret, hidden activity that I did not share with anyone but the few who were involved. It went like this: I got drunk one night and made a fetlife account and started trolling through spanking related groups and observing how people interacted with each other in them, trying to see if it was a place where I felt I could ever "fit in." I noticed various people who seemed pretty awesome, and others who made me decidedly uncomfortable. I've always been a "no nonsense" kind of girl. I don't take bullshit from people. If someone who hasn't earned the right to tries to boss me around, they're in for it. If someone makes a creepy sexual advance at me, I will make fun of them to all my friends. I had trouble figuring out how someone who enjoys taking a passive role and likes to be spanked (this was before the idea that I might have *gasp* submission in me had even been allowed to enter my mind) could present herself as both these things. The kind of woman that I ideally wanted to be was one who was outspoken, confident, even boisterous, who had no shame about what she wanted and knew that her choices, be they to be spanked, to be passive, to choose to submit, what have you, did not make her any less fierce and respectable. But I didn't know if that was possible, or if the community could find that to be "okay."

Then I discovered Erica and I knew not only was it possible to be the kind of woman that I wanted to be, but that there was someone setting a positive example for me in the community. Having Erica around, just on the internet, made me feel somehow safer and it made me like the Spanking World, hell, the world in general, more because she existed.

Then a sock puppet claiming to be a Mormon spanko started to freak out when "she" got called out on her socketry and attacked a whole group of people, including me, and I discovered that the spanking community was FULL of smart, strong, hilarious women like Munchkin, Lily Starr, The Famous Kat (who doesn't seem to have a blog anymore), and Iggy, and that the male Tops were often awesomely fun individuals that I could truly respect anywhere, like Richard Windsor. And then suddenly, BAM, I felt like I was part of something. I grabbed that and ran and my life has been pretty fricken amazing ever since.

Anyway, needless to say, I like Erica a lot and was looking forward to meeting her. We met up at a Starbucks and she got us some comfy chairs (since I was taking the bus due to transportation failures, she got there first). And then we started talking: we talked about our favorite people to film with, what my shoots had been like recently, what her best and worst experiences shooting had been, what she enjoyed about parties she'd attended, what I get out of playing with sadists and why that's awesome for me and a bunch of other stuff. She explained the way that some groups and organizations within the scene came to be and she laughed out loud when I told her a clever brattism that I'd said in a recent shoot. Hanging out with her made me feel great: she's warm and welcoming in person and just as well spoken as she is online. She's fun and sweet and awesome. And she's beautiful. There's something about her that's undeniably stunning.

We sat and talked for two and a half hours. It was an awesome day.

The rest of my trip to LA was largely filled with vanilla adventures.  I went to the Sanrio Store

and to Knott's Berry Farm

and I sang Japanese Karaoke with Zeki. MaskofNormality took me out to Indian food and we talked about all sorts of stuff. Then, in the end, I packed up all my stuff and headed back to South Dakota. Malignus and Heather picked me up from the airport and I came home, got a lovely spanking and then started to catch up on all the sleep I missed. The trip was excellent, and I can't wait until I have a chance to go back!

Third Shoot with Lily Starr (Vacation Part 4)

I've had a hard time keeping up with my blogging recently. This is largely because I've been working very hard trying to get another spanking related internet project (which I will hopefully be finishing and launching before the end of this week) off the ground. I've had a lot of technical difficulty but I'm a very proud person and I've been insistant on doing all the work by myself instead of seeking help. I've done a lot of other great things recently that I can't wait to share, but I have to slog through them one at a time.

Today, I will be telling you about my third time shooting with Lily Starr Spanking. I'm very fond of Lily and her boyfriend, Robert Wolf. They drove out to Los Angeles from their location in the desert in order to shoot with me and with Erica Scott the next day. Unfortunately, NOTHING went right about getting to the shoot. It's a ridiculous list of things that became problematic. It would have been a night of wacky hijinxes if I hadn't been tired and desperately wanting to arrive at my shoot so instead it was a night of sad problems that annoyed me and were almost funny, but not quite.

I eventually got to Lily and Robert's hotel room in the middle of the night. They were quite happy to see me and we talked and joked for a little while. We then filmed our first scene. It was an F/F scene where Lily discovered some slutty underwear (given to me by Maddycake) in my drawer and got all irate about it. It was a lot of fun to film and I got to say some good, witty lines. 

After this, Robert and I decided to do the most serious scene that I've done with them. It's actually the most serious and personal scene that I've done to date. It's a real scene between us, in which Robert gives me a super hardcore spanking for showing up late and for messing up my plans that day and other irresponsibilities. This scene is pretty severe and has a lot of real crying in it, but it also highlights the excellent rapport that the two of us have, and it shows a lot of affection on his part afterwards. I should hope viewers will be able to tell that it was extremely relieving for me to be spanked in the way that I was during that video, and it was an experience I was really glad to share with Robert, because he's awesome. 

Yep!

After shooting, Robert told me that there were a few times when he felt a little bad because he was hitting me so hard and almost laid off the intensity a little bit, but then he thought "Wait! This girl lives with Malignus!" and kept going. :P True. Story.  

When we were finished, my pillow was wet with tears and makeup: 

And so was my face!

I REALLY like this photo of my face. I think it captures a lot of the way I was feeling.

I can't wait for Lily to post the clips and to share those with you! Stay tuned for more updates!

Vacation: Part 3

Whenever I say "I'll update tomorrow!" I always end up skipping that day. FAIL. I'm going to fix that problem by only saying that when I actually have the next post banked. Sounds like a plan to me!

The night after I shot with Clare Fonda, I hung out with a vanilla friend who is very dear to me. I mentioned her once before I moved: she used my computer and discovered that I was a spanko, and responded to it by giving me a little gift basket with a hairbrush, a mini-first aid kit and a thing of lotion. She's such a sweet girl and I really enjoyed seeing her. We "busted a mission" (as the kids like to say) to the local CVS to buy some Bacardi and Coke and came back and drank until tipsy on the roof, looking out at the LA skyline.

The next morning, Christy Cutie came and picked me up and we drove to Santa Ana, which, it turns out, is essentially Mexico except in Orange County. There, we met up with her daddy, Photodave (of Assume the Position Studios, with whom I did my first ever spanking shoot.) and shot a pretty awesome little set of videos. We're keeping them a secret until they're released, but they're A LOT of fun and feature both me and Christy. It was my first time doing a video along with another bottom, and I really like Christy. We have a lot in common: we both like writing, we're kind of big nerds, we love cute stuff and we both enjoy (blush) spanking fan fiction. Don't laugh at me. Fan fiction got me through a lot of dark and lonely times!

I'm halfway to making the Japan Fingers in this photo and halfway to looking like I'm mentally deficient. But Christy is cute! 

Photodave also bought us cakepops, which was my first cakepop experience and it kind of made my life.  After the spanking videos were done, and we'd had Mexican food like the folks in South Dakota can't even dream of and really brightly colored ice cream, I did my very first rope bondage set.

I'm not "into" bondage. It's not something I dislike, but it's entirely neutral to me. I did, however, want to be able to add it to my repertoire of things that I've experienced and have a few bondage shots in my portfolio. So we did a few quick and straight forward ties and Dave took some pretty awesome photos. I did find it kind of relaxing: it's entirely passive and very different than the very active mental states that I have when I'm experiencing *my* kink.

That evening, I went to my friends, Epipelagic, Charlie Frown and Rubashov's apartment for a movie night. I watched extremely little of the movie because I was mostly hanging out with people and laughing and eating delicious food that Epipelagic prepared.

Sexy woman in the kitchen! Yeah!

Their housing situation is pretty full of win: Epipelagic is married to Rubashov and Charlie Frown is her boyfriend and the three of them live together in an awesome, poly environment. Epipelagic is kind of my role model in terms of polyamory: she's probably the most compersive person that I've ever known. She always expresses genuine happiness for the things that make her friends and loved ones happy, even if they are in some ways to her personal detriment. I know that she really misses me now that I've moved (and I miss her EVERY DAY because she's amazing) but she consistently expresses joy for me that I know isn't feigned because I'm doing so well and enjoying my life here so much. It's very refreshing and being with her and talking to her helps me to stay focused on way that I want to be. Compersion isn't always natural, and if I deviate from it, it can be hard to retrain my mind to remain focused on the happiness that being happy for others can bring. The time I spent with her reinforced that a lot.

Epipelagic and Rubashov have a cat who is really shy and cute. He's super fluffy and I spent a lot of time hanging out with him:

That's all for today. I do not promise that I will post again tomorrow. I probably will, though. :P

VACATION: Part 2

Blogging while on Vacation didn't work out so well. This is largely because of two things: first of all, I was working quite a bit. I did more shoots in a week than I've ever done, and that was after I had to cancel one shoot due to illness resulting from exhaustion and another shoot cancelled on me. The second reason is because I was living in the moment as much as I possibly could: I tried to spend as much time as possible paying attention to the people I was with and the places that I was instead of being online or keeping my mind of what was going on in South Dakota. This was kind of hard for me, because I'm scatter brained and I missed my home a lot, but it ultimately was very rewarding. So I'll now tell all the stories that I can remember from the past ten days and then wrap up with what I learned about how to be a traveling model. Onward!

One thing which Maddycake and I love doing is going to stores and trying on cute clothes. It's one of the most girly things that I do. We go in and we shop for a long time, then we try a bunch of stuff on in different sizes and then we take photos of ourselves in the fitting rooms and in the end I almost never buy anything. It isn't that I don't INTEND to buy something- it's just that nothing ever has the right combination of fitting my shape and being inexpensive.

So, we went to Hustler Hollywood and did that one of the first nights I was there.

This didn't fit, but it looked pretty good while not fitting!

I found some pretty amazing booty shorts there, which were very nearly made for me:

Because they were $30 for essentially a pair of panties, and I am so very well behaved, I did not purchase them. But they were super fun.

I also tried on something that I used to be very opposed to, just for kicks:

(It's not the bird necklace: that's mine)

I have to admit: it's a very pretty piece of neckwear. Playing dress up never stops being fun.

The next day, Maddy and I spent a while tracking down ingredients for some amazing cupcakes that we made and then making said cupcakes. They were strawberry margarita flavored, with vanilla cake with lime zest and strawberry frosting with lime juice and vest, topped with homemade pink sugar and strawberry and lime slices. They were so much epic win!

Maddy and a new friend, Cassidy, did a lot of the work

We had time to take some photos of my butt (because what day is complete without!?)

Then we got ready and went to a party thrown by the TNG group which I started when I lived here and handed off to Maddy when I moved. There was so much amazing food, people who I've missed very much, and me successfully drinking without breaking anything. MaskofNormality made the absolute best carne asada that I've ever eaten. It was so good that I seriously dreamed about it. Then again, everything MoN does is pretty amazing. :)

I spent most of the next day shooting with Omar, an old friend and the photographer who I've worked with the most times. We had kind of a rough patch in terms of our friendship and collaboration when I moved away, but we smoothed things out and had an amazing time. We went to one of his secret shooting spots and took some amazing outdoor stuff, then we went and had pancakes (they were awesome) and then went back to Siq's place and took bedroom photos while Maddy got to learn about how shoots often go, since she's just started modeling.
I'll eventually be posting photos from that set once I get them back. :)

The next day, I shot with Clare Fonda. It was one of my highest profile shoots to date, and very, very exciting. Clare and her camera man were INCREDIBLY nice and easy to be around. They were fun and we laughed a lot during the shoot (when we were off camera of course!) and we did some awesome scenes that I look forward to sharing with you when they are released. Clare has about twelve pets and they're all pretty adorable.

Puppy!

Kitty! 

The shoot went well and I had a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to working with them again in the future. I don't want to give away too many spoilers, but I will say that I got to wear monkey pajamas in one scene and my new plaid kilt style skirt in another and that was full of win.

That's all for today! The story will continue tomorrow!